If you’ve tried to get a human agent on the telephone in response to COVID-19-related questions – about testing, perhaps, or vaccines – you’ll know that it’s easier to initiate a live conversation with a unicorn. Municipalities are snowed in under the volume of queries, concerns, comments and complaints. To try and alleviate the strain, many local governments are turning to artificial-intelligence-driven chat bots to offload the more common questions.
CivicPlus is a web development business headquartered in Kansas that specializes in building city and county e-government communication systems. The company recently announced that it has partnered with Frase, a software company headquartered in Boston, to bring its clients an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot solution. The collaboration comes in response to local governments’ need to increase citizen service automation in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and their staff and budget consolidations.
The new chatbot software, which integrates with CivicPlus’ CivicEngage web site solutions, simulates how a human would behave during a customer service interaction to provide a helpful citizen service experience without the need for manual administrative interaction.
“We are pleased to partner with Frase to bring technology to our clients that will allow them to meet the growing need for contactless government,” said Ben Berkowitz, CivicPlus VP of Product Strategy, in a statement. “Frase shares our commitment to bringing innovative, smart technology to the public sector. We are confident that together, we are bringing vital automated service capabilities to local governments at a critical time in their service evolution.”
Frase offers conversational AI tools designed to grow organic traffic, conversion rates and revenue with integrated content optimization to provide the best possible results to customer queries. The company notes that as the way consumers seek information has changed, all entities, including local governments, need to embrace the answer economy and leverage the value of artificial intelligence to provide prompt and accurate information.
“We understand that local governments are facing critical shortages in resources now more than ever,” said Tomas Ratia, Co-Founder and CEO of Frase, in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with CivicPlus—a leader in local government technology—to bring our solution to municipalities that play such critical roles in our everyday lives. We are committed to empowering local governments to streamline their customer services operations and to do it with smart technology that learns from every interaction.”
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
